In 1640, the legal records of Lanarkshire bear witness to the case of Lillias Bertram, a woman residing in the parish of Culter. During a period of significant judicial activity regarding the prosecution of maleficium and diabolical influence in Scotland, Lillias was brought before the local authorities to face charges of witchcraft. While the specific nature of the allegations brought against her remains unelaborated in the available court files, her designation in the record (C/EGD/2278) places her within a broader landscape of seventeenth-century social and religious regulation.
The documentation surrounding Lillias captures a moment in which the kirk and civil magistrates exercised their jurisdictional reach over the inhabitants of rural Lanark. As a resident of Culter, she became the subject of a formal process that reflected the prevailing legal anxieties of the era. Although the surviving archival trace for Lillias is brief, it serves as a testament to the structured legal framework that governed communities during this tumultuous century, documenting her involvement in a judicial system that sought to interpret local disharmony through the lens of witchcraft.